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The 5 reflective questions that can transform your classroom These questions are designed to help you think about how each relates to your classroom and your teaching practice. As we begin this journey please understand that I believe that all teachers can improve their ability to motivate and challenge each student which will ultimately lead to an increase in student achievement. I also believe that all children begin their formal education with excitement and enthusiasm; somewhere in the process most of them lose that excitement. I believe one of our most important tasks as teachers is to rekindle that energy. That is the primary goal of the empowered classroom. Question 1:
What are the guidelines that you use to create an environment where all students can learn? This question is designed to help you to think about your classroom management practices. If you currently use terms such as “be respectful”, “work hard”, “do your best” – then I would ask you to define what each of those phrases mean to you. Now realize that of the 25 students in your class, there are probably 25 different definitions. Those are examples of what I refer to as „well intended but confusing‟ rules. Unless you are taking the time to actually teach your students what you mean by „be respectful‟, you may think you have been clear and specific only to be frustrated by misbehavior. In almost every classroom I visit, I can see the rules posted somewhere. I always find it an interesting exercise to write down the rules and then talk to the students about what has been posted. Rarely will students tell me that the classroom is guided by those rules, rather they begin to tell me the „real rules‟ that govern the class. This is a very normal and natural phenomenon and it is the same in most large business institutions. There are formal HR policies, but the workers in the building can tell you specifically what you can and can‟t do or at least what you can or can‟t get away with. This brings us back to why you should spend significant time thinking about what rules will be in place. The Empowerment Key
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You may think that setting these guidelines is just one of those 30 min. slots on your first day lesson plan or just a formality to appease your administrator. I would ask you to consider that the guidelines you establish on that first day will set the tone of your classroom for the rest of the year. I believe that the environment you chose to create is the most critical aspect of an empowered classroom. I am not dismissing the importance of good curricula, or sound pedagogy, but the environment is the arena where all of those things come to life. I hope that you picked up on the phrase I used “the environment you chose to create”. You are the leader in your classroom and you will create some kind of environment even if you don‟t realize you are doing it. The trick then is to consciously create an environment where students can excel, feel safe to make mistakes, and to take risks. They will respond to your calm, assertive leadership. That is the first step towards empowering your classroom.
Question 2:
How is communication facilitated by the physical arrangement in your classroom? As you think about this question, visualize your classroom – how the student desks are arranged, the location of your desk, the central teaching area, the location of any technology, windows, doors…..it‟s all important. This is another one of those things that most teachers don‟t give enough attention to (that‟s why it‟s on my top 5 list). There are several critical factors that the physical arrangement you chose will control. First let‟s talk about traffic flow – does the arrangement of the student desks allow for easy movement around the room. Not just for your students, but also for you. You need to have an arrangement that allows you to get to any point in the room in The Empowerment Key
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under 4 seconds. Take a look at your current arrangement and decide if you could make that 4 second dash. Typically what I see when I visit classrooms is a desk pattern that has been determined more by the shape of the room than the needs of the teacher or the students. I fully realize that some classrooms make it a real challenge to be creative, so all I can do is ask you to spend time thinking about your traffic flow. In addition to the traffic flow is the information flow. When your students are sitting at their desks, do they have clear line of sight to the teaching area? To fully engage your students in the lesson you have designed, it is critical that they can easily stay focused on you and that you can see their faces. I have seen classrooms where the desks faced a series of windows to the outside. Everything that happened through those windows was much more interesting than the lessons inside. I have seen rooms where the desks just seem to have been tossed together in a random fashion. Understand I am not saying that teaching/learning canâ€&#x;t occur in situations like this, but it makes the job that much harder. I know you will agree, we donâ€&#x;t need anything that makes our job harder. Another consideration for you is to see if the desk arrangement matches your teaching style. If your style is more direct instruction with minimal student interaction, then having desks arranged in pods or small groups will be very frustrating for you. If you enjoy student collaboration then having your desks in neat rows will be counterproductive. In my full empowerment modules I address this in detail and provide you with numerous teaching style/desk arrangement options. The placement of your desk is not quite as critical as the student desks and I typically see teachers favor either having it in the front of the room or the rear. They can always give me their reasons why they like that placement and as long as they are happy with it, so am I.
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Spend time reflecting on the physical arrangement of your room and see if there is anything you can do to improve traffic flow or informational flow. I can guarantee you that the time you spend will be rewarded with greater influence over your classroom. Question 3:
How do you clearly communicate your goals and expectations for your students‟ achievement? As you reflect on this question, ask yourself about the jobs you have held. Have you worked for companies that never clearly defined how you were to do your job and the first time you discovered they expected more from you was during a review or evaluation? Have you had supervisors that only „chewed you out‟ for not doing your job, when that job had not been clearly explained? When goals and expectations are not clearly defined it puts people in a stressful mindset. We may be trying our best to be productive and useful, but if we don‟t know what the goal is then how will we ever know if we have been successful. Think about getting into your car and deciding that you are going to take a trip. Do you simply start driving? Do you just get on the freeway and follow the cars ahead of you? Ridiculous, right? At the very least, you would have a destination in mind and hopefully a map or gps that would help guide you – your classroom is very similar. Your students show up on day 1 not knowing where they are going and just trusting you to know how to get there. We can help our students tremendously by simply giving them a clear idea of what the big picture is for the year. Take time to review the major themes that you will cover during the year. Our goal is to get our students to own the curriculum, to see the relevance and get personally involved in the lessons. Regardless of your grade level, your state curriculum has established a scope and sequence for each grade level. You may have state or district guidelines that you must follow; it is ok to tell your students
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that those are the brick walls of your job – it doesn‟t prohibit you from doing other projects, but you must show competency in those areas. Now that you‟ve given your students the big picture, take time to share with them what you expect them to be able to do once you reach that destination. What performance skills do you expect them to have – be specific, and help them to see how the skills they learn during this year will help them in the years to come. Give them relevance for what they will be doing. Going back to my travel analogy – as you drive you undoubtedly would have marked key cities/landmarks that would help you to know if you were following the right route. Your students need the same kind of assurance – you don‟t want to get to the end of the year and simply say “sorry we are not where we are supposed to be”. You have to be able to make course corrections as you go – you may need to stay longer in one area or differentiate to help the diversity that you face. That is the art of teaching As I mentioned earlier, our goal is to get the students to own the curriculum, to make it their own. The only way to do that is for them to have a very clear picture of what they are to learn, what skills they need to possess, and then to construct projects, instructions, and activities that allow them to develop those skills in order to reach their destination. For those of you familiar with Backward Mapping you will recognize that is exactly what I‟ve described. Start with the end goal in mind and then begin working backwards planning the lessons, materials, activities that will allow you to reach the goal. In my training modules we will spend several weeks looking at the use of rubrics to provide clear goals and expectations for your projects. Question 4:
How do you provide timely, corrective feedback to your students regarding their progress?
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This is an area that is a little painful when I reflect on my own teaching career. I know I could have done a much better job, and it is a critical area when trying to increase student achievement. I can‟t tell you how many times I scored tests or assignments and simply handed them back with little or no explanation to my students. That was not a good practice. The type of feedback I‟m referring to is what Marzano calls “criterion-referenced” feedback that tells a student where they stand in relation to a goal or skill. This feedback becomes the checkpoint that I asked you to think about in Question 3. Revisiting the driving analogy – if you stopped along your journey and asked someone “Is this Chicago?” and they simply replied “no”, would you have a clear picture of where you were in relation to your destination? In Marzano‟s book “What Works in Classroom Instruction” (p. 108) the authors make a statement about the type of feedback provided and its correlation to achievement: “….notice that simply telling students that their answer is right or wrong has a negative effect on achievement. Providing students with the correct answer has a moderate effect size (.22). The best feedback appears to involve an explanation as to what is accurate and what is inaccurate in terms of student response. In addition, asking students to keep working on a task until they succeed appears to enhance achievement.” The timing of your feedback is also critical to achievement. The closer you can link your feedback to the activity/test provides the greatest enhancement to achievement.
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Another observation that Marzano makes in his “What Works in Classroom Instruction” (p.98) “In fact, feedback seems to work well in so many situations that after analyzing 8,000 studies, researcher John Hattie (1992) commented that “the most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback. The simplest prescription for improving education must be „dollops of feedback‟” (p. 9) As you reflect on your practice you should realize that your goal setting and feedback go hand in hand. I found in my own teaching that if my students failed to reach my expectations, I was usually at fault, not them. Typically I found that where I had fallen down was in giving clear, specific guidelines for the projects I assigned. That is a tough admission, but one that needs to be made if we are going to allow our students to reach their full potential. As the teacher I am responsible for all aspects of my students learning. If you can provide clear specific guidelines (think rubrics) for the work you expect your students to do and couple that with timely, specific feedback on their work you have taken a huge step toward empowering your students to perform at their highest level. Question 5
“What are your core beliefs about students and their education?” This is without doubt the toughest question I will ask you to think about. It gets to the heart of why you do, what you do. Why did you go into teaching? Why have you stayed in teaching? It doesn‟t matter whether this is your first year or your 30th – I believe that all of us must revisit this question often throughout our career. A quote has been attributed to Theodore Roosevelt:
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“People don‟t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” ….so let‟s replace the „people‟ with „students‟ and you have: “Students don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” the relevance of that statement has been proven over the course of my career. If you truly want to empower your students to achieve their fullest potential, then you must establish an environment where learning can take place. An environment that is safe and comfortable for your students and for you. You must work hard to establish a relationship with each of your students – get to know the real person that lives inside of each one of them. Realize that the colored hair, piercings, and attitudes, are often just defense mechanisms to keep people from hurting them. A lot of our kids come to us from very dysfunctional situations and if we blindly expect them to be “normal” – that may not happen. When you really get to know your students, you will be able to tell from the moment they walk in the door if something is bothering them. Sometimes it is just a feeling you will get, especially in the beginning, listen to that little voice. Without calling attention to the student, quietly ask them if they are ok – be genuine – they will be shocked that a teacher cared enough to ask. It may take time for them to accept that you are a true and genuine person who truly cares about all of your students, but once you have that reputation – watch out – your classroom will come alive and be a real community of learners. Do you truly believe you can make a difference in every student‟s life? (ok, for those counting, yes I snuck a 6th question in here) In my workshops I am often asked this exact question and I can, without hesitation, say “YES” – it is a working definition that I keep for myself. Ask yourself this “what are the alternatives?” – choose some students to forget about? Pick and choose which students are „worthy‟ of our time and attention? I can‟t live with those alternatives – and believe me some students make it very hard to keep that belief, but they are the ones who The Empowerment Key
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probably need us most of all. I wish I could say I have been 100% successful with each student, I can‟t – no teacher can. We all must make that commitment to keep searching for ways to connect with each generation that walks into our room. As a teacher, you have my admiration and respect for the work you do. The fact that you found my Empowered Classroom™ material shows that you care enough to keep looking to see what else is out there to give you that edge you need to be successful in your classroom. Well my friends we have come to the end of my 5 (yes I know, actually 6) reflective questions. I hope that you have gained at least a few insights that will help you in your practice. As you move forward I encourage you to subscribe to my full, Empowered Classroom™ series. All teachers benefit from professional development but one of the biggest problems with PD is that it is usually short term – a weekend or a series of 3 or 4 classes and then you are on your own. While this type of training may provide an initial burst of energy, it often burns off quickly with no lasting value. What I provide for you is a year of ongoing support (4 modules per month) that is available to you anytime you turn on your computer. Each week you will receive a professional development guide that reflects a monthly focus on a different aspect of your teaching practice. Each guide provides key points of research-based instruction that is designed to give you immediate tips to integrate into your teaching pedagogy. You will also have the opportunity to join educators from around the world to form a community of professionals to address any and all issues that are most important to you. That is 48 weeks of support arranged by 12 monthly themes plus the ability to collaborate with teachers worldwide. Additionally all clients receive great discounts to the live workshops I offer throughout the year. As much as I love the online environment, there is nothing better than being together face-to-face. It is very powerful to feel the surge of energy when we come
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together with one purpose and work our way through to practical solutions that you will be able to take back and implement immediately. As you can tell I do not believe that education is a „spectator sport‟ – so get off the sidelines and join me in the middle of the field. It is a great game! Best Regards and wishing you a positive and empowered year! Carl
Carl Meibergen M.Ed. Educational Technology M.Ed. Educational Administration Empowered Classroom Mentor About the author: Carl has a background in education stretching over 35 years; classroom teacher, program coordinator, administrator and professional development designer/leader. Carl now mentors and coaches teachers from around the world and shares with them the art of empowering their students. To learn more about his work, visit www.empowerclass.com. NOTE: You are welcome to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end.) It would be appreciated if you would send a copy of your reprint to carl@empowerclass.com
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